Michael E. McHenry is a Professor of Materials Science and Eng., with an appointment in Physics at CMU. He graduated with a B.S. in Metallurgical Eng. and Materials Science from Case Western Reserve in 1980. From 1980 to 1983 he was employed as Process Engineer at U.S. Steel Lorain Works. In 1988 he earned a Ph.D in Materials Science and Eng. from MIT where he studied magnetic properties of quasicrystals. He was a Director's Funded Post-doctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Lab from 1988 to 1989 where he performed research on high temperature superconducting materials. He joined the faculty at CMU in 1989, and his current research interests are in the area of nanocrystalline magnetic materials. He has published over 200 scientific journal articles. He was a recipient of an NSF National Young Investigator Award and directed a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) for developing high temperature magnetic materials for aircraft power applications. He is Publication Chair for the Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) Conference. His research involves rapid solidification processing, plasma synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles and characterization of magnetic properties as a function of field, temperature and frequency. He has performed ab initio calculations on the magnetic properties of materials. He is a 1998 Honorary Member of the Indian Materials Research Society.

Research Interests

The research interests of M. E. McHenry are in developing an understanding of the magnetic properties of materials. This includes interfacing theoretical and experimental studies of magnetic and superconducting materials. He has studied flux pinning in high temperature superconductors He has investigated fundamental magnetic properties of magnetic surfaces, interfaces and multilayers. He has a continuing interest in the magnetic properties of icosahedral structures includes the study of magnetic quasicrystals and the magnetic and superconducting properties of fullerenes. His recent efforts have evolved from the study of carbon-coated magnetic nanocrystals produced by the Kratschmer-Huffman carbon arc method and fine particle magnetism in the same. This lead to studies of the plasma torch synthesis of metallic, C-coated, oxide, carbide and nitride nanoparticles. Most recently reactive gas plasma torch synthesis has been used to produce nanocrystalline ferrite materials for high frequency applications. The surface structure, and its influence on properties, is being studied in faceted ferrite nanoparticles.

Prof. McHenry has active research in bulk and thin film soft magnetic metallic nanocomposites. These have excellent soft magnetic properties as measured by the figures of merit of combined induction and magnetic permeability. The CMU alloy HITPERM has alpha-FeCo nanocrystalline grains all embedded in amorphous magnets. In HITPERM nanocomposites the a'(B2)-FeCo is formed with significantly improved high temperature magnetic properties. High temperature operation is advantageous for the application environment, to allow integration with other high temperature electronic components, or to increase efficiency by going to higher frequency.